


Here Be Dragons

by abscission



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alchemy - freeform, Alternate Universe - How to Train Your Dragon Fusion, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Berk (How to Train Your Dragon), Human AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abscission/pseuds/abscission
Summary: There are two types of dragons: the summer-born flame-spitters and the winter-born ice-breathers. Unknown to their Viking opponents, all dragons have the ability to take on human form.When Gilbert is saved by Ludwig, he chooses to use his human form to repay the life debt incurred, unaware that Ludwig is the son of the Chieftain of Berk, Hermann. But the alpha of the dragon coven, Ivanovich, is not happy that yet another dragon escaped. He'll make an example out of Gilbert, even if freezing Berk to the ground is what it takes.





	Here Be Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> No promises.

The Ancestral Glade, mythical ancient-home of the dragons.

Tucked away in the wintery mountains where no summer-born can reach, the Glade is the ultimate destination for those that fly with the winter chill. At least, it used to be.

Any dragon worth his feathers knows  _they_ have been to the Glade and back, and it fucked them up hard. No one's quite sure what caused it: the treacherous journey, or what awaited them in the Glade, but it left the elder sister a glutton, the younger sister a jealous, wrathful mess, and the middle brother walking the fine line between illusions and reality.

Those three can’t really be considered dragons anymore, either. Really, when one's abilities are no longer bound by pain—.

One time he'd seen Natalya with talons for fingers and a mouth of dragon teeth, back bursting with bloody feathers in half-formed wings - a conglomeration of forms that had his bones aching in phantom pains - tearing another of their kind apart.

Gilbert stood up to them once. He's got a scar right down his back to show for it.

Order in the coven is maintained by the glint of her claws and her sister's dark red maw, Natalya keeping them in line for her brother.

Some choose to disappear, slip away in the aftermath of a raid or before a scuffle, donning their human forms and running away.

Cowards, all of them.

Gilbert fluffs his feathers and breathes air into the layers to warm himself up.  _He’s_ not spent too much time outside of the necessity in his human form, measly sacks of meat those are, and besides, there’s a raid to that human village later on in the week. Better to start drawing the distinction somewhere, eh?

*

Ludwig hadn't  _really_  wanted to become a blacksmith. Still can't put a figure on whether he wants to continue this life. Sure, it's good, honest work, and it earns him a decent wage, enough to live by himself. Couple his contribution to the Viking bloodthirsty love of metal and all things sharp with his status as the son of the chief, and he has a decent life in the tiny seaside settlement of Berk, mending and making everything from swords to horseshoes.

His real passion, however, lies in the books and the forest, with its carpet of plants and birdsong and the open sky, away from the ash and smoke and bloodied stench of Viking life. If his father would let him, he'd be living in a cabin in the forest.

But he's only heir to the position of chieftain, so he can't. He compensates by opting to live in a separate house at the edge of the village and stay in the forge every dragon raid, hammering away, straightening bent weapons, sharpening axes, melting down scrapped and broken swords. When the dragons leave, either fought off or carrying a stash of the village's sheep, he'll go round to each house and fix it back. After burnt-down accommodation is re-secured, all weapons and equipment goes through him on their route back to the defensive line.

The villagers, combatants and civilians alike, comment on his lack of involvement with the anti-dragon effort. Not unkindly, mind you, but intensely speculative.

For this reason too, Ludwig never strays too deep into the village.

"With those arms of yours, you could fell a Flamehead with ease!" Mathias laughs as he leans over the counter, watching Ludwig set the axe head into its handle. It's not quite a delicate piece of metalwork, but it's durable, efficient, and has served Matthias plenty well. "Man, you would probably chop some poor flying lizard's head right off its neck if you ever did swing around an axe!"

Ludwig doesn't answer as he hands Mathias his treasured axe. It's not that Ludwig doesn't know how to fight, dragons or Vikings. As a matter of fact, his father has knocked combat into his system like a stones into foundation. It's a personal choice.

He doesn't have to imagine the axe in his hands chopping off the sinuous neck of a dragon to know the result—he's seen it happen, seen the split-second spray of blood that spurts from the severed stump as the headless neck snaps to and fro. Most Vikings live for that moment, including Mathias, but not him.

 _Must have been dropped on his head as a baby_ , says his father the Chief once, dismissively.  _But no one will know, now, since the woman who raised him is killed,_ cue a weighted look in his direction, _by a dragon._

Ludwig has long exhausted his patience with reasoning to his father and village exactly why he won't take an axe and chop off a head. Explanations included "it's not in me" to "I might miss and cut off my own foot more often than a dragon head" but no one was having any of it.

That's why he picked up smithing. Contributing, if indirectly, to the "war" made people quiet down.

Matthias takes the axe, gives it a spin, then stabs the wooden end into the dirt. With the other hand, he draws his black coat tighter around himself. Then he leans in over the counter as though divulging a great secret, one gloved hand braced on the wooden surface, and says, blue eyes glittering and voice heady with the kind of thrill Ludwig recognized as pre-hunt jitters, "I'm off to find a dragon, Lutz, may the gods be on my side, eh?"

Instead of echoing the blessing, Ludwig says with a raised eyebrow, "In this weather?" and sticks his head out of the counter window to look up past the eaves at the greying sky. Even though noon had just passed, the sun was already hidden behind a thick cover of clouds, which was worrying even considering the brutal onslaught of winter. "Looks like a storm's about to hit. A bit early in the season to be hunting winter dragons on foot, a bit late to be spotting summer dragons."

“I know." Mathias grins, rocks back on his heels and sticks his free hand into a pocket. "But Lars shot one down last night during the raid. He's gotta take care of Henri today, little tyke's broken a fever in the morning, so he's laid it on me to go find the one he felled. Need anything from Raven Rock? That's where I'm heading."

Dragons came in types more varied than the personalities of Vikings. Summer dragons are easier to handle. They are smaller, for one, has a limited number of shots of fire, and only a thin coat of feathers. Last night's raid had seen less of the summer dragons and more of the winter dragons, fresh out of hibernation. But those ice types not only have an additional layer of down, they also have thick leathery skin under that to deal with the winter cold, making hurting them extremely hard. They are also bigger, stronger, and more vicious. A bit sluggish after emerging from their hibernation, recently, but dangerous all the same.

Their breaths are pure frost, their roars blasts of ice and sleet, and they have hide thick as a ship’s hull. For the bigger ones, it's rumored that one good sweep of their giant wings would stir up a blizzard.

A few years back, Berk was attacked by a huge beast of a winter dragon, nearly twice the size of their mead hall. The village was lucky that the thing hadn't come with any other dragons nor landed in the middle of Berk — that would've collapsed the little village right into the seas then — and that one's wings didn't cause a blizzard with one flap, but it certainly whipped up a gale and near toppled the chief's house. Ludwig spent an obscene amount of time with the carpenters Lukas and Eiríkur, restoring it to its former glory.

Ludwig gives Mathias' attire a once over with a critical eye. "You sure you wore enough to face down a storm as well as at least a Frostbreath?"

No one ever said the Vikings were creative in any way. They name things as they see it.

"Yes, I did," Mathias rolls his eyes then thumps a hand on his chest, where it makes a muffled sound. "Tino stuffed me into five layers while Berwald just watched. You sure you don't need anything from Raven Rock?"

"Not at the moment," Ludwig retracts his head back into the warmth of his shop. "Thanks for the thought, and good luck."

Mathias and his family of Tino and Berwald are as close to Ludwig's best friends as he's going to get.

Tino is an archer and in his off-time, helps Berwald with his shop. Tino is a man small for a Viking, but can handle a dragon and down his mead like any other. To work off the burn in his veins after a good drink, he makes deliveries for Berwald to the neighboring village, where he promptly downs more strong alcohol, and, still on foot, makes his way back. It's a wonder he's not chanced by bandits yet, not that Ludwig wished it upon his vertically challenged friend.

Berwald is a merchant and Mathias’ younger brother. He owns a general goods store that sells everything from crossbow bolts to knitting needles, but his main trade lies in dragon parts for concoctions, for the dragon-less Southern alchemists who fancy themselves a spice of the North. When pressed, he swings a sword as well as anyone, but he favors what Mathias calls a ‘stick’, but is really a staff, blunt and weighed in lead on both ends.

Ludwig has showed all three his collection of dried herbs and sketches of leaves and pressed flowers. They know of his interest in the wild, hence the thoughtful question from Mathias.

"Oh and, Lutz?" Ludwig peers out of his shop; Mathias is several strides away, calling back with a cheeky smile. "If I don't come back by nightfall, sound the alarm!"

Ludwig replies by giving a wave and retreating back into the shop. Mathias' boisterous laugher sounds before the man breaks out into a whistled tune, which fades away with each crunch of his boots.

*

The predicted storm comes and goes, and Mathias returns, empty-handed and down on spirits and soaked to his bones, his black coat flecked with bits of plant matter and melted snow. So Tino drags him into the house, presumably to warm him up and drown themselves in strong liquor.

Berwald sits in Ludwig's shop, having been caught by the storm, then decided to stick around and help. He invites Ludwig over for dinner, because Ludwig's house is on the other side of Berk while their's were just across the road, and Ludwig agrees. Berk, while sturdy, is still made of wood and stone, and a pre-winter storm makes everything extra cold and slippery.

“—just dis **appears!** Poof!" Mathias' voice drifts around the corner, as Ludwig and Berwald hurries into the house and shuts out the cold with a decisive slamming of the front door, their entrance momentarily lighting up the narrow hallway. "I'm telling you, there's  _something_  going on!"

His voice carries weird accents and strange pauses, and when the duo rounds the corner, Ludwig finds out why.

Tino sits cross-legged on the carpet near the fire, and Mathias is slouched in an armchair, right beside the hearth and swathed in blankets now dry. Both cheeks are slightly pink and their eyes too shiny. As expected, a clutter of glass bottles are littered around them, and both held wooden mugs in their hands.

Berwald sighs beside Ludwig, hangs up his coat, and goes over to pry the mug out of Tino's hands.

Berwald is a tall man, and his head almost always brushes the banister of the small house. Normally, he cuts an imposing figure with his flint-like eyes and stern gaze and extreme height, especially beside the small and good-natured Tino, but right now, as he proceeds to wrestle with Mathias for his mug, win, and stoke the fire, Ludwig sees nothing but a family man.

" _Ber_ wald—!" Tino complains, scratching at the man's pant leg, the only part of Berwald he's able to reach from his position on the floor. "Give it _back_ , we're not finished—"

Berwald pushes the hands away with an annoyed sound, but Tino just switches to scrabbling at the sleeve instead. Mathias scrubs the side of his face, and then his eyes finally focuses on Ludwig, still in the doorway.

"Lutz!" The man calls, lurching up from his seat, shedding his blankets like a baby bird with its down. "Here for dinner?" and then, quieter, to Berwald, he says, "Could you get us some water? Tino drank more than I did."

Berwald sighs heavily, but nods, extracts his hand, and disappears into the kitchen. Mathias' voice is almost back to normal, so he couldn't have been too drunk. Still, a state of inebriation is normal in Berk and for Vikings in general, so Ludwig doesn't bring attention to it. He merely nods, saying, "Pardon the intrusion."

"Don't say that, man, you're as close as family! Here, come over and let me tell you all about what happened during the Loki-damned hunt today." Mathias ambles over, a wobble short of slurring, and slings an arm around Ludwig's shoulders.

Berwald appears at the kitchen entrance, pointedly holding two cups of water in his hands. Mathias sees the cue and steers Ludwig in that direction, giving Tino a mild kick in the back as he passed to get the smaller man moving.

The small kitchen is mostly sharp angles and damp wood, and ten minutes later, all four fits into it, not quite cramped, but not quite cosy.

Mathias and Tino had calmed, somewhat, and Berwald, ever the man of few words, has continued Tino's attempt on their dinner, which was rabbit stew and half a frozen duck. Thanks to the weather, he's able to pick up right where Tino left off.

“—I'm telling you, the tracks were all there: broken branches, upturned earth, frost on leaves, the likes." Mathias is doing an animated and passionate retelling of his ill-timed midday hunt. He and Ludwig sits at the table, on opposite sides. "There were even feathers shed! It was clear as day, I swear to Odin."

"Not very clear, then," Tino says, smirking, dipping a ladle into the rabbit stew, at the same time Berwald rumbles something about the names of gods and the usage whereof.

Ludwig motions for Mathias to continue. The other man's trademark grin jumps back on his face, wiping away the childish pout at Tino's jabs. "So I followed it, quiet as night, making sure of all those things like wind direction and whatnot, even made sure my axe didn't hit anything, because the track marks said this thing was gonna be huge, you know, like the one a few years ago? You should've seen the tracks, Lutz, they were _everywhere_ and the frost was coating  _everything_. I couldn't tell if it was the dragon's breath or just forest snow. The furrow in the earth fit with all the others, and you could actually see the claw marks and tail lashes! So I follow it, entirely sure that I'll find that cold-blooded oversized beast."

Mathias' face is lit up by the excitement of his story. Berwald sets a steaming hot bowl of stew, which was only rabbit, because the duck hadn't thawed correctly and no amount of work would make that block of iced-up meat edible, in front of him. “Ye didn' , tho’," Berwald says, sounding almost amused, and Ludwig glances up at the man for his show of emotion.

Berwald's face is head to read, as always.

" _What?_ Don't interrupt me!" Mathias flails his hands around, but is stopped by Tino. The space is too small for someone as long-limbed as Mathias to be waving himself like a banner. "Anyway. I follow the tracks, quite sure that I'll be back with the location of a dragon corpse and a few vials of blood before the storm hits, but then those tracks lead me to a sharp drop off into a valley-like place, it was like a hole in the landscape — Lutz you might want to see it, it's mighty interesting — and then the marks just disappear. Just, disappears, off into thin air. I mentioned feathers, right? Those were silver, and plus the frost, I wasn't sure if the beast was bleeding their silver blood, but there was absolutely  _nothing_  of any of those three in the valley, and I would swear to Hel and back that I  _looked_!"

"Okay, okay," Tino says, sliding into the seat next to Ludwig, passing to him a portion of food and holding his own in another hand. "You've told me that a few times already. Move on to the speculations bit. That's the real kicker."

“Do t'll." Berwald takes the seat next to Mathias, beginning to eat.

"So here I am, standing at the edge of this huge pit, thinking my head's just got screwed on wrong or my eyes got messed up or something, and I jump into it to check, but there is nothing! Not a feather, not a flake of scales, not a lick of frost anywhere, except those that's caused by the fact that it's a sunken pit. What was I supposed to think? And then I do a more thorough check of the place, quite aware than if I stay any longer, I'm gonna have to wait for the storm to blow over in the exact place a dragon disappeared into." Mathias shoves a spoonful of meat and soup into his mouth, gesturing with his free hand. Ludwig listens quietly. The kitchen has a small window, and outside, the village had lit its torches. The window's frost makes the flames dance and spark. "But then I thought I should just go home and come look after the storm, you know? Since an injured dragon making its way through a forest leaves marks that can't be washed away in a snow storm. I had jumped into the place, see, so I actually had no idea of how to get up, until I found the man-sized opening in between two of the rock formations. And there I did see tracks, but of a different kind."

Mathias pauses for dramatic effect.

Around the table, only Berwald kept at his food. Tino, despite having heard it several times, is enraptured by the story, just as Ludwig.

"Smeared on the rocks, was blood. Human blood, and lots of it. Naturally, I freaked. I thought the dragon had injured a man, maybe bit off an arm or two, you know! So I pushed all thoughts of the dragon aside for a while, searching around the rocks for human tracks. I did find some, but they didn't lead anywhere, just staggered in circles, all the while dripping blood all over the place like a broken pump. I tell you, it was horrifying when the trail stopped with no disturbances."

Mathias stares at all of them in turn. "I tried looking, but with the storm pressing in, didn't find more tracks of the dragon or the man."

The kitchen is silent, at least until Berwald stands up and collects the bowls into a pail.

Ludwig can't help but frown. "Why didn't you assume the dragon regained its bearings and flew off? The way you say it, sounds like the pit-place was a good launch-off point."

"Because," Mathias pushes away from the table and walks out of the kitchen, returning a moment later with two silvery feathers. "I found these on the trail. Laura came by earlier, while you and Berwald were still in the 'shop, and identified them for me. These are primary feathers. Loosing these are a huge thing for fliers, everyone knows."

Ludwig holds out a hand for the feathers, and Mathias drops them into his palm. The feathers are slick and smooth, asymmetrical sides tapering off into a wicked point, in indescribable ways different from those of a bird. It was tinged with red near the shaft, which Ludwig suspects to be the dragon's coloring instead of blood. Everyone knows that dragon blood is silver.

"Her brother sure did a number on the beast." Mathias says, taking back the feathers and rolling the stem between his fingers. "These don't grow back easy, and—"

"A downed dragon is a dead dragon," Tino finishes for him, uncharacteristically grim. "But a slow and agonizing death, to be sure. If not from blood loss than hunger, should it have survived the fall."

Ludwig wonders what could've happened to the dragon. He takes a swig of mead. Their carcasses don't just disappear into thin air. Should they do so, Berk wouldn't be a flourishing trade town of dragon parts in spring, the period of dragon hibernation where all are sluggish from a need for sleep.

As Tino hurries out to help Berwald with the dishes, Mathias takes a seat beside Ludwig.

"I know you're going to go into the forest again before the cold really sets in," he says, looking at Ludwig with worried blue eyes, "but I beg you on behalf of all of us: be careful. There's possibly a dragon on the loose. Being injured to them is just another incentive to be more dangerous. Alright, buddy?"

"...Don't worry. I'll be careful."

Mathias laughs, sounding relieved. "When Lars said he's shot down a dragon but wasn't sure whether it's dead or alive in the forest, my first thought was whether you'll run into it somehow. Ridiculous." He runs a hand through his hair. "Take real care, friend. You are the future ruler of Berk, after all."

*

Two days later, the sun finally deem mortals worthy of its blessed light and warmth, and the early winter chill dissipates somewhat.

Ludwig seizes the chance to go back into the forest. Laura had lent him a book about winter plants several days ago, and he's positively itching to do some fieldwork instead of staring at pages.

She's also asked him to collect some medicinal herbs if he finds them, but Ludwig doubts he'll find much, given the season. The fact that Laura is asking at all does not bode well for the fighting population, as it means the medicine house thinks it might face a shortage, and frostbite both hurts and is worse than burns.

The forge is quiet, the embers low, and the villagers are all out enjoying what most probably is the last of this year's sunshine. No one looks like they're going to ask for a mending anytime soon.

So Ludwig makes a quick detour to Lukas' place, because Lukas is also an okay smith besides being a carpenter--all he lacks is experience--to ask him to cover the forge for one slow work day. The man agrees without much hassle, and Ludwig, temporarily free of obligations, goes into the forest.

The evergreen forest of the north isn't all that different in appearance between summer and winter. The main difference is the undergrowth. The trees might not change colors or leaves and grow as they always have, taller and wider every year, but the animals and plants that grow closer to the ground change with the seasons.

For a while, Ludwig indeed follows the book, seeking out late-autumn bloomers and early-winter growths, doing sketches and clippings and comparisons and tucking each specimen into his pack to bring home, but soon finds his feet leading him towards Raven Rock, where Mathias had encountered his mystifying evaporating dragon.

(He is pleasantly surprised when he does in fact find herbs. Maybe the villagers will get to not freeze their fingers off this winter.)

The ground under his foot gives way, and Ludwig almost falls down the slope.

A quick scrambling manages to steady him. Taking a second to catch his breath, he leans on a fallen tree and looks at what he's slipped on.

He's stepped on a patch of ice, thick and silvery, but when he takes a closer look, he jerks back and nearly falls again.

It's a patch of frozen dragon blood, and around it are smaller flakes of silver, frozen to the ground.

Now that Ludwig is looking, more of the same silvery flakes distinguished themselves from the forest frost, forming a rough trail. It's smeared on trunks, splattered amongst the leaves. Just like Mathias described--the stains were all over the place. Now that Ludwig knew what to look for, the tracks were suddenly very clear. So clear, Ludwig wondered why he’d never seen them before.

Besides the blood, gashes ran deep in trees, exposing their yellowed insides; branches are tangled or cut off or snapped, leaves torn from their places; the damage spanned easily the height of a tall fir tree.

Either the dragon is huge, or it was in so much pain it didn’t care where it went. Perhaps against his better judgement, Ludwig follows the trail.

*

Fuck, by the Mother Dragon’s tail feathers, this is  _bad_.

Gilbert fluffs his feathers and breathes into the space to keep himself warm, but the shivers don't stop, and his right wing stings.

Two goddamned days and it’s still bleeding. Not as badly as it did on the first day upon which he frosted the damned place as soon as he could, but the blood is now a small but steady, worrying stream. Could be because he keeps trying to fly, to get out of this hellhole — literally, he's in a stupid monstrous ditch, it's got a lil' pond filled with fish an' all, the hell'd _they_ do to get stuck in here? — but it doesn’t work, he _can't get out_. His most important feathers are gone, and he can’t scale the walls with one wing.

He’s tried everything he knows of now, even forcing a shift, but that just hurt more than he could imagine, (another reason for him to dislike their human forms—they hurt too damn much), the wound stretched and amplified by magic, and after holding out the storm, thankfully still had the strength to shift back.

Looking at the wound, he wished he had flame instead of ice. If he could just fire it, it might be better.

No fucking way is he going to go back to the roost like this. Limping back to  _Katen’ka_  gushing blood? He might as well serve himself up on a bonemold platter.

Gilbert curls up in the only patch of sunlight, his back against the smooth stone wall of his earthly prison, and tries to nurse his wound. Never let anyone say winter-borns didn’t like sunlight, Gilbert will bite their heads off himself. He loves sunlight—it gives his feathers some much needed warmth. They’re creatures too, and just because they breathed frost doesn’t mean they’re actually icicles inside.

He's bitten off (and clawed what he could reach) the blackened bits of the festering wound and plucked off the damaged feathers best he could. The stalks hadn’t started growing back, won’t be for another few days, and anyway first the skin has to close. All the trashing he’s been doing has not helped.

Okay so it’s his fault.

At least this gives him a solid excuse to stay away from Ivan and his mad sisters, he thinks, bitterly, looking around the pit he's in and swishing his tail to get into a more comfortable position.

He licks at the wound, tenderly, but can't quite control the lashing of his tail from the pain that shoots through him. The scent of blood spreads from his wing, so strong he can almost see the trail it leaves. Annoyed by the whitish tint his nose’s telling him is in the air, Gilbert lifts his head and snorts a mist of frost into the clearing. As it settles, blurring the landscape and covering everything in a sheen of grey, he shifts, satisfied.

And quite unexpectedly, a sound issues from the edge of the pit, and something shifts in the mess of upturned plants and earth that mapped Gilbert’s crash-landing. Immediately, Gilbert tensed. He retracts his wings, shifts his position to hide the wound, coils his neck, and bares his razor-sharp teeth towards the offending sound.

The neck is the most vulnerable part. He’s seen too many a dragon felled that way.

The wind shifts, and he smells a human. Belatedly, he remembers the hunter from two days ago. Is this him?

And then the human steps out from its cover, blue eyes wary, hands out with nothing in them, a leather pack slung over its shoulder.

Gilbert flares his good wing. The red markings emerge from where they were hidden under the dominant white feathers, and the sunlight, weak as it is, casts a dappled shade through his wing onto the clearing floor, and despite the bad timing Gilbert feels a bubble of pride in his feathers. Only one in the roost to have such contrasting colors of red and white, even for a winter-born, though perhaps he should have put more effort into caring for the white-colored bits. To his credit, it’s quite hard to groom himself, even in half-human form.

Gilbert takes a cautious sniff. Sheep leather. The hunter smelled of wood and sharp edges and dragon blood, but this one has an overwhelming scent of human tools—leather and metal.

It says, “Shh, it's okay, I won’t hurt you,” taking slow steps towards him, and Gilbert relaxes a little, convinced by the tone, but is torn on what to do.

His injured wing aches. The tension coiled in him is unwelcome, and already his heartbeat is rising, feathers quivering, with the tickle of a blast building up in his throat. His stomach is on the verge of complaining, too, since the only food he’s managed to catch were several fish from the pond earlier. Would the human do better as sustenance?

The humans slips on a loose rock, then scrambles to right themselves and Gilbert, startled, growls, a low rumbling sound that vibrates the very trees in the clearing. He can’t have said  _stay away_  any clearer. The human jerks back a step, hands still up, and only then does Gilbert notice its eyes fixed on his wound, behind him.

Shit.

And to his wary surprise, the human stoops, shrugs off the pack, opens it, sticks a hand in it, and emerges with a bundle of plants.

Gilbert recognizes that plant. It can help stopper a wound, and is one of the rare herbs that work on both humans and dragons. He's seen Lili collect it for Basch when the brother got a sword-wound to his leg, he's seen Eliza use the same to treat Roderich when an arrow found his shoulder, but he can't apply it himself when he can't shift into human form to collect it.

“I can help,” says the human, blue eyes glittering strangely, but then, so did Ivan when he said the same, and that did not end pretty. What would the human gain from helping a dragon anyway? A life debt, undoubtedly, but it’s not as if they understand such concepts, and Gilbert would rather die than—

...he wouldn’t.

He's hungry, he's in pain, and this human can help. Gilbert pulls himself up to his full height. He's nowhere as big as Ivan, no one is, but he's bigger than Natalya, herself roughly half the size of a small longship.

He towers over the human — who admirably doesn't flinch — and roars in its face, blasting it in semi-harmless frost.

A threat can't be clearer. He settles, satisfied and shaking his head a little, then shifts so that the wound was in view of the human. He coils his neck around to watch, and waits for it to move.

*

Ludwig takes a deep, shuddering breath that burns his throat from the cold and doesn't do much to settle his nerves.

A dragon, close enough to give him a shower of ice and also bite his head off, is letting him treat its wounds.

 _He_ can't believe his _own_ luck.

He glances at its head only to meet a pair of slitted red eyes, unblinking in their scrutiny. Then a feather on its face twitches, and it bares its teeth.

Can dragons understand human speech? It certainly seems so, and at the moment the white dragon flares its good wing and jerks its head and gives a chilling grunt, red eyes fixed on the bloodweed in his hands.

 _Get on with it._ It seems to say, eyes narrowing.

To be honest, Ludwig isn't sure why he offered help.

He hadn't expected to find Mathias' disappearing dragon, hadn't expected it to spot him.

Previous dracontine encounters were limited to flashes of discolored scales beneath giant torches throwing harsh orange light, teeth and claws glinting white, or a shadow in the night sky. Ludwig had never seen one in midday before, and doesn't think he'll get to again.

The dragon fascinated him.

No one knows much about dragons. Why they have two broods, one in summer, one in winter? How does their bodies work, why do they keep stealing the sheep? And those questions can't even start to graze the surface of their lack of knowledge about the Vikings' mortal enemy.

He tries to stop the shaking in his hands, hiding it with the act of brushing snow off himself.

The dragon huffs, a puff of warm air, this time pushing its head right into his personal space, breathing loudly over his shoulder.

"Okay, okay," he says, slightly annoyed, going up to the dragon's gigantic wing. "You scare me, alright, can't I have a few seconds to compose myself?"

It snorts, and retracts its head.

Ludwig raises an eyebrow, but turns his attention to the wound.

He shakes his head at the obvious self-mutilation the dragon had gone through, then steps close to look. Claw and teeth marks litters the wing, feathers around the wounded area are bent out of shape or half-snapped, and the silver blood, both dried and fresh, is stark against the dirty white feathers.

A strip of pale flesh is barely distinguishable from all that white, and offhandedly Ludwig wonders why winter dragons are so pale, both inside and out. Vikings are pale-skinned and pale-haired, but their flesh aren't, as testified by the patients at the healers'.

A gouge, deeper and wider than the claw and teeth marks, runs clean across the underside of the middle part of the wing, tearing out feathers in its wake, and is still slowly seeping blood. That must be the wound caused by the crossbow bolt from Lars, and the dragon didn't help things from all the banging and clawing — which probably caused the wound to tear further. There are signs of frostbite too, where the flesh is blackened and falling off.

When Ludwig tries to part the other feathers to take a closer look however, the dragon jumps, snaps the wing back to its body and whips its head around to yelp and growl and bares its teeth at him, which makes _him_ leap back in alarm.

"I have to look at the damage before I can help, don’t I?" he demands, from his new position a few feet away, "If I don't know what I'm dealing with how do I treat it?"

To his slight amusement, the dragon's head and neck feathers are puffed up, making it look bigger than before, and as it stares him down for a second, red eyes to blue, the feathers deflate. The it slowly re-extends the wing, and rests its head on its shoulder.

Ludwig looks at the dirty, bloody mess, and sighs.

"I'll need to clean this," he says, glancing at the dragon. "I'm going to need to get bandages for your huge wings, too. Any ideas?"

Red eyes blink, once, slowly, then it raises its neck. After some shuffling where it got its good wing out from its squashed position against the stone behind it, it _stands up_ , swishes its tail, and plucks his pack off from the ground in its mouth.

"Hey!" Ludwig says and makes a grab for it, but it's too late. The dragon is fast, and at its full height is about as tall as two of himself. Even trying to keep his pack in sight is giving his neck a crick.

The dragon begin to walk, holding it wings close, and Ludwig, given no choice, follows.

Then he realizes, the dragon is showing him where the pond is. It's a big pond, with clear water and even some fish darting around, and when they reached (it's on the other side of the huge pit — Mathias is right, for once), the dragon pops down his pack, flares the good wing and tilts its head in a show of _this good enough?_

Dragons do understand human speech then. But how?

Ludwig placed the question at the back of his mind for now. "I'm impressed," he says instead, "but what are you going to do about the bandages?"

The dragon lowers its neck so that it can stare at Ludwig with one red eye, then lifts one huge claw to tap on his coat.

Ludwig folds his arms, shakes his head, and stares right back. "You're crazy," he sighs, "Let's get you cleaned first."

It snorts again, showering Ludwig with a fine cloud of frost _again_ , but crouches and extends its wing.

Taking out the cloth he had prepared to wrap plants in to dip into the water, Ludwig begin the tedious task of cleaning both the wound and the feathers around it.

Maybe he should switch professions.

Once again, he is struck with wonder at how huge dragons are. He's never seen one smaller than a house, but then he supposes just like the Vikings, dragons don't send their young into battle. Also, Berk's houses are very small. When his father brought him along on one of the trade excursions to the southern trade centers off-shore, Ludwig saw for himself the large houses and even larger mead halls, though Viking ships reigned supreme in the size factor.

But that was years ago, and before Ludwig expressed disinterest in inheriting the station of chief.

The dragon's screech and the thump of its tail brings Ludwig back to reality, and he realized he's just pulled on a feather too hard.

It nips the air next to his head, and swats his face with its tail.

"Can you be less sensitive?" Ludwig gives the good part of the wing a shove, knowing the dragon would feel it, "I'm the one helping you, I can leave at any moment and let you bleed to death."

It tilts its head, and doesn't look convinced. As evidence, it snaps its jaws, showing off its pointed teeth.

Ludwig opts to ignore it.

Thankfully, it left him alone long enough for Ludwig to finish cleaning. Then he begin to puzzle over the bandaging.

Without bandaging, applying anything short of ointments would be of no use. Issue is, he doesn't have dragon-sized bandages, and no, he's not going to sacrifice high quality winter-wear for dragon.

The dragon equivalent of bandages would probably be...extremely long, extremely soft towels.

...

It would be impossible to get short of a commission.

He looks at the dragon. It's resting its head on the front limb, neck curled so that it can watch him.

"How _do_ you treat yourselves?" he muses, not really expecting an answer.

The dragon looks at him. Blinks.

And then, to Ludwig's complete surprise, raises its head to the heavens and looks back down in a perfect imitation of an eye-roll

It reaches over to nose the bloodweed, laid out to the side, then the cloth in Ludwig's hands, then presses a foot into the ground hard enough to leave an imprint, then points its nose at its wound.

It tilts its head at Ludwig, watching expectantly.

Ludwig frowns. He can't quite believe what's happening. Did a dragon just give him instructions?

"Give me a moment." Ludwig thinks he gets it.

He's to, basically, press the bloodweed into the wound (which now that he looked, was not that big of an area, only that it struck an important one) and apply pressure like he would to any human wound, and...what?

"You want me to hold it there until you stop bleeding?" He says, miming the actions but incredulous, and the dragon nods, its whole head going up and down.

...Ludwig looks at the sun.

It's gone more than halfway down, and if he doesn't start heading back soon, he is set to receive an earful from his friends, particularly Tino and Mathias, the hypocrites.

He looks at the wound. It's still slowly seeping silver blood, the liquid in turn flowing slowly into the pond. The cloth in his hands has equal parts mud, water, and dragon blood.

He's done that much already, might as well go the whole way.

Sighing, he goes to retrieve the batch of bloodweed he just gathered. They're the last from this year, but he could always tell Laura he didn't manage to find any.

Rifling around his pack, he unearthed some more cloths, and a coil of thin, strong rope he's forgotten he had.

Looking at the two objects, he suddenly got an idea.

*

The human left in a hurry earlier, after promising he wouldn't tattle out Gilbert to his Viking friends, and that he'd be back tomorrow with food, if he's able.

Gilbert looks at the make-shift bandage the human constructed.

It had lined its swathes of fabric with the plant, wrapped them around the wound, then using rope and thick branches, secured them tightly to his wing bone.

Due to the wound's location, Gilbert can't move the tip of his wounded wing, but he can feel the coolness of the plant working its magic.

The blackened bits on the edge should fall off in time, and once the skin closes over and the shafts begins to grow, he'd be able to shift into human form to recuperate easier. For now, all he has to do is be patient, and hope to the Mother Dragon the human doesn't go back on his word.

Speaking of which, he owed the thing a life-debt now.

Damn it.

Well, it can’t be that hard. The only settlement the dragons attack around here is Berk and that other village, and humans from that village doesn’t come so far up north. Berk gets attacked by dragons almost weekly, so all he’s got to do is help that human once, and he’ll be free.

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-ed. Any volunteers?


End file.
